Wireless Question

[pitt30]

ive been leaching around reading, reading and reading. thanks goes to this forum for getting me up and running with 151/u5 hack.
Anyway, my question before i buy any network adapter is this:
i dont mind using ethernet but would rather go wireless.
however, i want to keep wep enabled and disable the ssid. ive read where people are running into problems with this setup.

my question is, is there a config file that handles these settings, and if so, why is it being ignore.

any info on the subject would be great. as i said im a newbie but want to learn

[David Bought]

Originally posted by pitt30
my question is, is there a config file that handles these settings, and if so, why is it being ignore.

If "151/u5" means you're booting into the 2.4.4 kernel (sw rev 3.x) networking is thoroughly unsupported. You need to compile iwconfig, build a new kernel that correctly supports wireless, and then pray that those features actually work in the Linux WLAN driver that supports your hardware.

And wep is worthless, if you are using it to "protect" your network you need to unplug your access point and do a lot more reading before you lay a finger on it again.

[pitt30]

thanks for the info. because recompiling the kernel is a little over my head, i guess ill stick with ethernet and forget wireless right now.

as for the wep. this is home use on an older age street. not much worry here. im actually getting ready to set up WPA but waiting on drivers for my dads card. fortunatly/unfortunatly(lol), we share a back yard and he jumps on my lan through wireless setup. any way, i would figure the driver (if i could find one) would be able to do wep now and maybe later move on to WPA after further releases.

so it looks like tivo will be wired, no worries, it will probably be faster that way. my main reason for doing this is video extraction

anyway, thanks again, and thanks to all u guys and gals for making this such an informative site. (unlike some others)

[cobelli]

Sorry david, but I think you are incorrect. According to the following post, wireless usb is possible. It will, however, involve recompiling drivers.

http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=24626&highlight=usb+2.0

In addition, forget wep and use lock down the mac addresses in your access point.

- Cobelli

[David Bought]

Originally posted by cobelli
Sorry david, but I think you are incorrect. According to the following post, wireless usb is possible. It will, however, involve recompiling drivers.

http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=24626&highlight=usb+2.0


I didn't say it was impossible - I said it was unsupported.

The thread you mentioned does contain both source and binary versions of the modified drivers. However, it is not a trivial matter for an inexperienced user to change the wireless settings - he will need to either recompile the kernel or recompile the wireless driver, and the latter is a rather inelegant solution to boot.

In addition, forget wep and use lock down the mac addresses in your access point.

MAC addresses can be spoofed very easily - even more so on a WLAN because the attacker can sniff them right out of the air and begin impersonating your own equipment.

Read some of the articles and docs on the Dsniff site - you will soon learn to sleep with one eye open.

http://www.monkey.org/~dugsong/dsniff/

[cobelli]

True you did say "supported", and it does make a difference to the argument. Still, your original post intends he reinvent the wheel. While it is no trivial matter to recompile a driver, it's quite possible because their are people who have done it before. I have yet to see anyone rebuild iwconfig (allthough, I could be wrong).

True MAC isn't safe either, but it beats the crap out of wep. If you have something on your network that someone wants that badly anyway, you should be running vpn to a wired box outside your wlan.

- Cobelli